Forever Is Longer Than You Can Imagine
by Homicide.and.Suicide.777
Summary: A struggle that arises when Jack is faced with Forever. How could the Guardians have allowed themselves to go so long without actually connecting to any children? Jack doesn't understand until he is forced to watch Jamie grow older and forget... Sometimes time itself is the enemy, and Forever is an awfully long time.


_Forever Is Longer Than You Can Imagine_

Jack reminded the Guardians that they had shirked away from the children; had stopped visiting them and actually going out to see them. They agreed, he was right, as Guardians they _should_ interact with the children…. But they didn't tell him _why_ they'd allowed themselves to grow so distant in the first place.

It only took Jack eighty years to discover that truth for himself.

Jack watched in passing. He played with Jamie when he was younger, and he was with Jamie more than any other living being, but as the years passed on and Jamie grew older, the boy became busy. He was busy with life, with growing up and getting a job and completing school and eventually getting married; all the things Jack himself had never been able to do, his life cut short when he fell through the ice on that fateful day.

Jamie grew up and slowly, steadily, with his time consumed and his priorities elsewhere, he began to forget until eventually, he no longer believed in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or Santa Clause…. And eventually, he forgot about Jack Frost, too.

Jack felt tears prick his eyes the day he came up to Jamie, the boy he hadn't seen in only a couple of years, and when suddenly, the boy turned man passed right through the Spirit of Winter. Jack clutched his chest, breathing heavily. Jamie…. No longer believed in him. Despite this sad revelation, Jack continued to visit him over the years.

One year, Jamie became ill. He was old, and frail, and the mere presence of the Winter Spirit brought a coldness to the room that Jamie's sickened state couldn't afford to be exposed to, so Jack stayed away for a while. He waited, and eventually when he came back, it was to a tombstone.

Jack discovered a new power of his on that day: He decorated the glossy stone's surface with frost that would never melt and never fade, whether it be Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall, and that preserved the stone perfectly, so that the rain nor the very earth itself shaking could damage the monument to his first true believer, and his first true friend. Even the plants and vines of the Earth dared not touch it or try to creep up its polished frosty lengths. He had marked the tombstone for every other force on Earth to see: This now belonged to the Winter Spirit, it was _his,_ and thus could not be touched by any other than himself.

Jack had other children he played with, that he got along with, who he realized after Jamie's passing would too grow up and eventually leave him permanently. The Guardian of Fun didn't want to believe it at first, but he found that he was terrified. Scared witless and nearly to tears knowing now why the Guardians had distanced themselves from the children so many years ago: Knowing the children and watching them grow and pass was pain to an immortal soul, pain that he knew not if it would fade, or if it would forever keep its biting edge.

Jack made a promise after Jamie's death, held within the frost on the tombstone: He promised that no matter how badly it hurt, he would always be with the children. He would appreciate their time together, he would never forget Jamie, and he would always be willing to shoulder the pain for the joy and love that the children brought to him. As long as this promise was kept, the tombstone stood strong, and anyone who planned to harm it or remove it would inexplicably change their mind and forget about it all together.

Jack kept that promise, for a very long time. However, in time, he would discover that he was capable of change, despite the fact that the blood in his veins was forever frozen still and his life and growth had ended so long ago. Subconsciously, and sometimes rather unwillingly, he began to forget…. Some would even argue that he changed so completely that, because of the pain and at the fault of time, perhaps he eventually was no longer even the Guardian of Fun….

It wasn't until well over three thousand years after the fact that his promise became jeopardized. The frost on the tombstone dimmed when Jack tried and failed to recall the name of his first believer, and it melted away altogether not two hundred years after that, when the faces of all the children ran together in patterns, and the razor-sharp pain of watching child after child leave him dulled, so that he was so accustomed to it that he never even felt its sting. His promise wasn't just broken: Like he had been to so many before, it was entirely forgotten, to the point that Jack had only the feeling that there was something missing, something he ought to remember, and it continued to fade until Jack could feel no displacement at all….

Jack stopped going out to greet new children and new believers. By now he had millions of believers, and he refused to utter the name of a single one, never wanting or even caring enough to feel the pain again, or to remember what was lost, or that the pain had ever even existed.

 _Time heals all wounds, no matter how much we wish it would just let us be…._


End file.
